


and of the starry sky

by starfleetbanana



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Relationship Study, Sharing a Bed, Sleeping Together, Sleepy Cuddles, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 21:22:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12920514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starfleetbanana/pseuds/starfleetbanana
Summary: Snippets of Hugh and Paul + sleeping.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so i'd planned a nap fic where they literally napped and fell asleep in different places but it's two am and i failed, so here's whatever this is.

Sleeping with someone was a thing, them staying at your place was something completely different and Paul had never really liked the idea of waking up to a stranger breathing on his face. He wasn’t very fond of the idea of being uncomfortable because he was a light and quiet sleeper and he hated people who snored and moved too much in their sleep.  _ Oh _ , and he was also scared of commitment.

Dating Hugh was scary because he was so sure of himself and Paul felt even more insecure next to him. Dating Hugh was challenging because Paul suddenly wanted the whole universe and Hugh was willing to give it to him. Paul had never wanted a thing besides exploring the universe and working with his beloved mycelial network. 

It was rather hard to recognise it was more than simply wanting Hugh to pin him against the wall and kiss him stupid. Paul wanted more than a taste of him, he wanted a taste of domesticity and romance he hadn’t let himself think of in a while.

“My replicator makes a really good coffee” His hands were shaking a little but he blamed it on exhaustion because somehow, he was feeling brave. He didn’t reach for Hugh but he offered him an honest smile, as if they didn’t have any other intentions despite what the colour of his lips said. 

“Do you.... want me to try it?” Hugh asked with a teasing smile that made Paul blush. He felt his face heat up and cleared his throat before answering.

“If you feel like it” He said looking directly into Hugh’s eyes. Certainly, there was something about Hugh that made him feel like he had so much potential it made him mad, because it made him think he needed him just a little to find his footing. 

For fuck’s sake, they’d had barely a few dates and Paul was already thinking of the future because he was incredibly frightened of not being what Hugh claimed he liked so much. He wanted stability, for once and Hugh’d made sure to let him know he was looking for a relationship.  

“Sure”.

Paul blushed during sex, but he kind of blushed all the time so he didn’t think too much of how hot his entire body felt when he opened the door and let Hugh in. They’d fucked twice before and it had been nice,  _ way better  _ than nice but Paul didn’t know how to put it without giving it too much thought, but this time when he led Hugh into his place he held his hand a little tighter and made sure to turn the lights on.

Hugh didn’t ask for a cup of coffee and they took their sweet time getting to Paul’s bed, interrupting their kisses with giggles and getting too distracted with each other’s lips to finish getting undressed. Paul felt clumsy trying to unbuckle Hugh’s belt with shaky hands because he couldn’t stop thinking of the first time Hugh’d sucked him off on his knees and how Hugh’d had to leave a few hours later and his rather small bed had felt quite empty in the morning. 

None of that mattered when Hugh called him “babe” and encouraged him to keep going because the hand of the nape of his neck made him feel grounded. He came all over his  _ pretty face  _ and kissed him slow and soft like the last time they’d fucked where everything had been absolutely amazing and they’d also taken a long time  — so long Paul had had to run back to his place to make it to an interview he had with a Starfleet professor.

This time, however, it was different. This time, they kissed lazily after Paul came, and held each other and talked about the hideous knick knacks Hugh could see from the bed. They were  _ memories,  _ Paul said, but it was sort of a lie because Paul wasn’t really a collector, he just felt like he needed an excuse to tell Hugh a little more about himself and get something back from Hugh. Eventually they stopped talking and Hugh drifted off first. Paul noticed he didn’t look relaxed or soft in his sleep, and he actually snored but instead of annoying him it made him feel  _ terribly  _ soft to think he was willing to put up with that if it meant getting to share a bed with him again. Paul followed not long after having decided to close his eyes and let the warmth of the other body in his bed  — and the snoring, lull him to sleep. 

Paul woke up before Hugh and took his time to calm himself down before he started panicking at the idea of losing just that. He caught himself smiling when Hugh’s snoring stopped and he started to open his eyes. It felt surreal to feel comfortable with the idea of someone waking up to his ridiculous smile. 

“What?” He asked after Hugh smiled back and hid his face between the pillow and Hugh’s shoulder. 

“So, how about that coffee?” 

It did feel a little more permanent and real than he’d expected. Not bad though, not bad at all.


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re so strong, though” Paul muttered, trying his best to walk and failing miserably at keeping himself up without Hugh’s help. It was his arms. So… distracting. 

The night had started in a very different way. They were having fun at one of Hugh’s favourite places in town, after Paul had taken him to see an Orion classic holomovie that he’d surprisingly enjoyed. Neither of them had plans for the night so Hugh’d decided to show him his favourite place and Paul had been a little too annoyed by the amount of people around him so he’d drunk himself into a state where he felt too good to even bother looking away from Hugh. 

“You’re so drunk, though” He retorted and Paul snorted. 

He’d seen Paul high before and he was completely different from drunk Paul. _This_ Paul was rather uncooperative being walked home and wasn’t very keen on the whole let’s-not-vocalise-how-annoyed-we-are-by-people thing. Luckily, they hadn’t gotten into trouble but he’d been talking about that one blue fish looking alien that hadn’t stop staring as if they were judging him. 

Dragging his boyfriend’s ass home wasn’t the hard part because, as Paul mentioned a thousand times on their way home, he was actually pretty strong. The hardest part was to get Paul to close his mouth and stop talking about everything that came to his mind. Except Paul was a scientist and he had a lot on his mind.

“Doctor, doctor, did you know mushrooms sleep? They can sleep for a very long time and survive a lot of things, so many, Hugh”

“Humans sleep too” He answered, trying to take Paul’s shoes off while Paul looked at him offended. 

“Yes, but we do not survive to a lot of things, we’re nothing next to fungi” 

He sighed, “You’ll be nothing next to fungi in your lab tomorrow if you don’t stop talking, babe”. After succesfully taking Paul’s jeans off he walked into the kitchen to get him a glass of water for when he woke up. That would be relatively amusing to see, he thought.

“They’re so cool under a microscope, not as cool as people as a subject of study, but pretty cool because they don’t speak a lot” Paul continued once Hugh’d placed the glass of water on the night stand. He waited till Hugh was in bed next to him to sigh and conclude, “which means they don’t give you an answer when you need it”.

“Go to sleep, please”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the slight angst thanks

Fear wasn’t something completely foreign to Hugh. He’d experienced fear in multiple occasions throughout his career as a Starfleet doctor and it was something he accepted as part of the human condition, just like interpersonal relationships and, sometimes, wanting to skin Gabriel Lorca alive for unnecessarily risking lives. Except fear had been haunting him since Paul’d injected himself with the tardigrade DNA. 

He understood Paul’s work and he knew he was a brilliant scientist, but that didn’t give him superpowers or made him invincible. According to his readings, however, Lt. Stamets was pretty much human still, which meant his body could only take so much and 133 jumps were more than he thought his body could take. 

Paul insisted he was okay, he didn’t need any more medical attention because he’d been under the doctor’s supervision from the very beginning, so Hugh had to remind him there were quite a few important things he’d failed to mention. Despite his complaints he’d been taken to the medbay where Hugh’d run as many useful tests as he could to make sure he was alright and sedated him to make sure he got some rest before Lorca asked to see him. 

He couldn’t stop thinking of what Tilly’d said but he wasn’t one to pressure Paul to communicate, particularly when he wasn’t sure Paul could take it. He looked exhausted even as he slept and Hugh couldn’t help but think of all the times he’d had the privilege of waking up to Paul’s frown, because he did have a slight frown even when he slept, or to a soft kiss on his shoulder when he was getting bored of being the only one awake. If anything, he wanted to have that until the day he died even if it seemed to get closer and closer everyday, and he’d do anything he could to make sure Paul was as happy as he could. 

He leaned down to reach for the manual controls of the biobed to fix the angle and make him more comfortable and moved to the next patient. He had work to do, a place to call home and the love of his life to keep him on his toes. 

He looked peaceful, even more so after what he’d seen him go through down in engineering, what their captain hadn’t seen because he was too busy being a soldier, unlike the rest of his crew. It was sad, he thought, how Paul hadn’t woken up with the energy to run down to engineering to see how work was going in a long time, how Paul hadn’t said good morning only to ramble on the spore drive, how Paul hadn’t looked anything but exhausted in weeks. It seemed dumb but for a minute he missed the days where Paul’d wake up and get out of bed without a word because the dream he’d had had given him a new idea related to the spore drive. He missed the days where Paul wasn’t too exhausted to softly kiss his shoulder at least twenty times to wake him up.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, any kind of feedback's appreciated.


End file.
